The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1887-12-26
WAGES or SEWING WOMEN.
How They sunk to Their Preseni
Leveltp New York.

Leyeiin New York.
Stories have been printed within the
last fortnight to the effect that wom-
en- work for years at time at less
than 80 cents day, sewing from early
morning until long after dark at night,
says The MelO York. EUen,ng Post The
statistics collected by Miss Van Etten
and some of the agents employed by
her show that the wages received by
more than fifteen thousand women.
who sew in their homes, do not
average more than 81 week the year
round for the hardest of hard work.
Several times the leaders in labor
movements have undertaken 10 find "a
remedy for the low wages paid by sew
g-women, and the only suggestion
toward solution has been to take such
work entirely out of the tenemenls
and concentrate it in large shops. This
has been done with cigarmakers, who
are forbidden by law to do work in
their tenemcnts. So long as women
take work to their homes it is hard
for any union to find out exactly what
they were paid; the women who do
such work are usually very ignorant
and refuse to spend the little time and
few pennies which il would be neces-
sary to give in order to organize a
working union. That much suffering
does actually exist among these pco-
is anquestionable, and the many sug
gestions toward an Improvement seems
to have resulted in nothing practic al.
Almost periodically the matter is
written up in some newspaper. and
il is pointed out again that the life of
a family subsisiing on less than - 4
week cannot be either n hcalthful or II
pleasant one. The fact that the vast
quantities Of mems clothing aud wom-
ems undertaking are made in the
living rooms of the very poorest peo-
pie, close quarters. where cooking,
working eating, and sleeping go on,
where children are reared and people
die, has more than once suggested the
possibility of the spread of contagious
disease lhro;;gh clothing which comes
from these places Work is not sus-
pended because scarlet fever or other
contagious diseases is among the chill
drcn; the beds are often made up of
piles of clothing in different stages of
preparation or the shops to
which they 20. This is one
danger of work in the tcnements
which the law might consider.
Several employers of large numbers
of work-people were asked rs to what
possible step scwing-womcn might
take in order to obtain better pay. Not
Tone of the persons questioned denied
that the condition OF both men and
women. and even children, in the tcne-
ments where cheap sewing is the
occupation, is miserable in the extreme.
One manufacturer of cheap clothing
said: II often 90 among the tencmcnts
OF Essex street To see the people who
do my work, and | confess that it is n
hcartrendinS sight, especially the
sight of The unfortunate children who
seem to survive only 10y miracle; to tell
the truth, the life before them, when
they Ito grow up, is scarcely worth
living for. | can cite scores of fam lies
in which the sew ng-machine huns
from 6 o'clock in the morning unit
or ~ o clock at night; N which every
member Of the family more than
years old works hard; in which any
thing but the coarsest of food is I'm.
known. Sundays and week days there
is the same unending druIgcry carried
on at speed which exhausls the
worker These people drop of to
sleep ut 9 or 10 O'Clock and stop work
simply because they can work no long
err The world of children brought up
in the dens is pretty dismal one, as
may be imagined, and the only hope
for them is that the laws may send
them TO school and open a way of
escape.
Nevertheless, with families. es-
pecially in the case of the Polish Jews,
east of the Bowerv, the amount of
money made is sufficiently large to
warrant something like rest after
many years of this sort of toll. | sup
pose that family composed OF father.
mother. a son. and a daughter grown
up, and one or two smaller children,
all working in this ncessant and I'M
healthy fashion, will earn an average
of 500 week. Very often the head of
the family employs one or two girls
from outside who assist in the work.
The rent required for two rooms is
about $40 month. and the living ex-
penses of the family not more than 81
week, so that when work is steady
there is a considerable surplus at the
end of the month. The sad cases
which have been reported of late in the
newspapers by the advocates of organ